Chapter III

RETROSPECTIVE

JOAM DACOSTA had relied entirely on Judge Albeiro, and his death was most
unfortunate.

Before he was judge at Manaos, and chief magistrate in the province,
Ribeiro had known the young clerk at the time he was being prosecuted for
the murder in the diamond arrayal. He was then an advocate at Villa Rica,
and he it was who defended the prisoner at the trial. He took the cause
to heart and made it his own, and from an examination of the papers and
detailed information, and not from the simple fact of his position in the
matter, he came to the conclusion that his client was wrongfully accused,
and that he had taken not the slightest part in the murder of the escort
or the theft of the diamonds—in a word, that Joam Dacosta was innocent.

But, notwithstanding this conviction, notwithstanding his talent and
zeal, Ribeiro was unable to persuade the jury to take the same view of
the matter. How could he remove so strong a presumption? If it was not
Joam Dacosta, who had every facility for informing the scoundrels of the
convoy’s departure, who was it? The official who acocmpanied the escort
had perished with the greater part of the soldiers, and suspicion could
not point against him. Everything agreed in distinguishing Dacosta as the
true and only author of the crime.

Ribeiro defended him with great warmth and with all his powers, but he
could not succeed in saving him. The verdict of the jury was affirmative
on all the questions. Joam Dacosta, convicted of aggravated and
premeditated murder, did not even obtain the benefit of extenuating
circumstances, and heard himself condemned to death.

There was no hope left for the accused. No commutation of the sentence
was possible, for the crime was committed in the diamond arrayal. The
condemned man was lost. But during the night which preceded his
execution, and when the gallows was already erected, Joam Dacosta managed
to escape from the prison at Villa Rica. We know the rest.

Twenty years later Ribeiro the advocate became the chief justice of
Manaos. In the depths of his retreat the fazender of Iquitos heard of the
change, and in it saw a favorable opportunity for bringing forward the
revision of the former proceedings against him with some chance of
success. He knew that the old convictions of the advocate would be still
unshaken in the mind of the judge. He therefore resolved to try and
rehabilitate himself. Had it not been for Ribeiro’s nomination to the
chief justiceship in the province of Amazones, he might perhaps have
hesitated, for he had no new material proof of his innocence to bring
forward. Although the honest man suffered acutely, he might still have
remained hidden in exile at Iquitos, and still have asked for time to
smother the remembrances of the horrible occurrence, but something was
urging him to act in the matter without delay.

In fact, before Yaquita had spoken to him, Joam Dacosta had noticed that
Manoel was in love with his daughter.

The union of the young army doctor and his daughter was in every respect
a suitable one. It was evident to Joam that some day or other he would be
asked for her hand in marriage, and he did not wish to be obliged to
refuse.

But then the thought that his daughter would have to marry under a name
which did not belong to her, that Manoel Valdez, thinking he was entering
the family of Garral, would enter that of Dacosta, the head of which was
under sentence of death, was intolerable to him. No! The wedding should
not take place unless under proper conditions! Never!

Let us recall what had happened up to this time. Four years after the
young clerk, who eventually became the partner of Magalhaës, had arrived
at Iquitos, the old Portuguese had been taken back to the farm mortally
injured. A few days only were left for him to live. He was alarmed at the
thought that his daughter would be left alone and unprotected; but
knowing that Joam and Yaquita were in love with each other, he desired
their union without delay.

Joam at first refused. He offered to remain the protector or the servant
of Yaquita without becoming her husband. The wish of the dying Magalhaës
was so urgent that resistance became impossible. Yaquita put her hand
into the hand of Joam, and Joam did not withdraw it.

Yes! It was a serious matter! Joam Dacosta ought to have confessed all,
or to have fled forever from the house in which he had been so hospitably
received, from the establishment of which he had built up the prosperity!
Yes! To confess everything rather than to give to the daughter of his
benefactor a name which was not his, instead of the name of a felon
condemned to death for murder, innocent though he might be!

But the case was pressing, the old fazender was on the point of death,
his hands were stretched out toward the young people! Joam was silent,
the marriage took place, and the remainder of his life was devoted to the
happiness of the girl he had made his wife.

“The day when I confess everything,” Joam repeated, “Yaquita will pardon
everything! She will not doubt me for an instant! But if I ought not to
have deceived her, I certainly will not deceive the honest fellow who
wishes to enter our family by marrying Mina! No! I would rather give
myself up and have done with this life!”

Many times had Joam thought of telling his wife about his past life. Yes!
the avowal was on his lips whenever she asked him to take her into
Brazil, and with her and her daughter descend the beautiful Amazon river.
He knew sufficient of Yaquita to be sure that her affection for him would
not thereby be diminished in the least. But courage failed him!

And this is easily intelligible in the face of the happiness of the
family, which increased on every side. This happiness was his work, and
it might be destroyed forever by his return.

Such had been his life for those long years; such had been the continuous
source of his sufferings, of which he had kept the secret so well; such
had been the existence of this man, who had no action to be ashamed of,
and whom a great injustice compelled to hide away from himself!

But at length the day arrived when there could no longer remain a doubt
as to the affection which Manoel bore to Minha, when he could see that a
year would not go by before he was asked to give his consent to her
marriage, and after a short delay he no longer hesitated to proceed in
the matter.

A letter from him, addressed to Judge Ribeiro, acquainted the chief
justice with the secret of the existence of Joam Dacosta, with the name
under which he was concealed, with the place where he lived with his
family, and at the same time with his formal intention of delivering
himself up to justice, and taking steps to procure the revision of the
proceedings, which would either result in his rehabilitation or in the
execution of the iniquitous judgment delivered at Villa Rica.

What were the feelings which agitated the heart of the worthy magistrate?
We can easily divine them. It was no longer to the advocate that the
accused applied; it was to the chief justice of the province that the
convict appealed. Joam Dacosta gave himself over to him entirely, and did
not even ask him to keep the secret.

Judge Ribeiro was at first troubled about this unexpected revelation, but
he soon recovered himself, and scrupulously considered the duties which
the position imposed on him. It was his place to pursue criminals, and
here was one who delivered himself into his hands. This criminal, it was
true, he had defended; he had never doubted but that he had been unjustly
condemned; his joy had been extreme when he saw him escape by flight from
the last penalty; he had even instigated and facilitated his flight! But
what the advocate had done in the past could the magistrate do in the
present?

“Well, yes!” had the judge said, “my conscience tells me not to abandon
this just man. The step he is taking is a fresh proof of his innocence, a
moral proof, even if he brings me others, which may be the most
convincing of all! No! I will not abandon him!”

From this day forward a secret correspondence took place between the
magistrate and Joam Dacosta. Ribeiro at the outset cautioned his client
against compromising himself by any imprudence. He had again to work up
the matter, again to read over the papers, again to look through the
inquiries. He had to find out if any new facts had come to light in the
diamond province referring to so serious a case. Had any of the
accomplices of the crime, of the smugglers who had attacked the convoy,
been arrested since the attempt? Had any confessions or half-confessions
been brought forward? Joam Dacosta had done nothing but protest his
innocence from the very first. But that was not enough, and Judge Ribeiro
was desirous of finding in the case itself the clue to the real culprit.

Joam Dacosta had accordingly been prudent. He had promised to be so. But
in all his trials it was an immense consolation for him to find his old
advocate, though now a chief justice, so firmly convinced that he was not
guilty. Yes! Joam Dacosta, in spite of his condemnation, was a victim, a
martyr, an honest man to whom society owed a signal reparation! And when
the magistrate knew the past career of the fazender of Iquitos since his
sentence, the position of his family, all that life of devotion, of work,
employed unceasingly for the happiness of those belonging to him, he was
not only more convinced but more affected, and determined to do all that
he could to procure the rehabilitation of the felon of Tijuco.

For six months a correspondence had passed between these two men.

One day, the case being pressing, Joam Dacosta wrote to Judge Ribeiro:

“In two months I will be with you, in the power of the chief justice of
the province!”

“Come, then,” replied Ribeiro.

The jangada was then ready to go down the river. Joam Dacosta embarked on
it with all his people. During the voyage, to the great astonishment of
his wife and son, he landed but rarely, as we know. More often he
remained shut up on his room, writing, working, not at his trading
accounts, but, without saying anything about it, at a kind of memoir,
which he called “The History of My Life,” and which was meant to be used
in the revision of the legal proceedings.

Eight days before his new arrest, made on account of information given by
Torres, which forestalled and perhaps would ruin his prospects, he
intrusted to an Indian on the Amazon a letter, in which he warned Judge
Ribeiro of his approaching arrival.

The letter was sent and delivered as addressed, and the magistrate only
waited for Joam Dacosta to commence on the serious undertaking which he
hoped to bring to a successful issue.

During the night before the arrival of the raft at Manaos Judge Ribeiro
was seized with an attack of apoplexy. But the denunciation of Torres,
whose scheme of extortion had collapsed in face of the noble anger of his
victim, had produced its effect. Joam Dacosta was arrested in the bosom
of his family, and his old advocate was no longer in this world to defend
him!

Yes, the blow was terrible indeed. His lot was cast, whatever his fate
might be; there was no going back for him! And Joam Dacosta rose from
beneath the blow which had so unexpectedly struck him. It was not only
his own honor which was in question, but the honor of all who belonged to
him.